Do not let them injure national health system (From Swindon Advertiser)

Do not let them injure national health system

4:25pm Tuesday 21st February 2012 in Letters

It is really alarming that our cherished National Health Service is under attack by the coalition Government’s Andrew Lansley.

Most of the proposed health reforms were not part of David Cameron’s policy statements prior to being elected to form a coalition Government by default.

People should really be alarmed that the real radical objective that most people would find objectionable and would certainly never have sanctioned, is the privatisation of the National Health Service, as any pretence of doing so by stealth has now been consigned to history, as Lansley has turned to wielding the axe full tilt at our cherished and globally envied institution. Many students in this country never thought that they would see ‘free education for all’ turned into an American style system based on ability to pay.

But despite their massive mobilisation in protest against the trebling of university tuition fees sadly all their efforts came to nothing.

People should really sit up and think about what is being done to the NHS before it is too late and we all have an American style system foisted upon us.

This would mean an inflated punitive bill to be paid for any type of medical treatment, along with a ‘great fat one’ if one is unfortunate enough to require hospitalisation, and can’t afford the private insurance.

You have been warned, and so it is time for the bleating sheep style ‘oh, it’s not so bad brigade’ of British people to oppose what Mr Cameron and his henchmen are doing before it is too late, and we all end up with a mirror image of what they have across the pond.

For far too long I feel that people of this country look to the USA whilst wearing their rose tinted spectacles, and have seemed to be oblivious to the damage that has been wrought upon this country by the likes of the right wing, American style corporate model, of which the Thatcher Government was such an advocate.

G A Woodward Nelson Street Swindon

Not a good example

I am sure that I am not the only person to have read G Humphrey’s letter (‘Hitler turned around a bankrupt country’, February 15) with incredulity. Whilst there are sadly deluded individuals who praise Hitler and his works, surely no one can seriously hold up the Nazi economic experiment (leaving aside the issue of totalitarianism and genocide) as having been anything other than an unmitigated disaster. It was only the onset of war in 1939 that masked the tottering foundations on which the German economy rested in the 1930s, and Hitler’s programme was always aimed solely at rearmament and preparing for conflict. Massive public spending did at first reduce unemployment, but it began to creep up as the decade progressed and figures were only disguised by drafting young men into labour battalions and excluding many women and most Jews from work.

If Mr Humphrey wanted to make a point about public spending on an epic scale, he might have referred to Roosevelt’s New Deal, which was also not without its critics at the time and subsequently, but was at least geared to helping Americans and not building a war machine. Why he instead chose to lionise Hitler is anyone’s guess.

Jon Benjamin Chief Executive Board of Deputies of British Jews